Pinoy still in shock after losing his wife to car accident in Saudi Arabia

A Filipino father of six in Saudi Arabia is still recovering from shock after losing his wife to a car accident early last month, a report of the news site Arab News said on Thursday.

A long-time resident of Saudi Arabia, Rasol Abbas lost his wife Raihana to a car accident while returning to Riyadh after a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Abbas has been living with his family in Jeddah for 20 years before they moved to Riyadh last year. They are known to many Filipinos as they loved playing host to pilgrims.

There are 1,512,539 overseas Filipinos living in Saudi Arabia, according to the 2010 stock estimate of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas.

On April 7, in a convoy on their way back from Mecca, Raihana died on the spot when the sports utility vehicle (SUV) she was riding in burst a tire near Al-Quwayiyah, some kilometers away from Riyadh.

Abbas's wife was thrown out of the vehicle. There were seven others in the car, including the driver and three children, who only had minor injuries.

The report said Raihana often asked her husband to travel to Mecca, so she could perform a pilgrimage and at the same time see her relatives living there.

Before she died, she reminded her relatives about death while she was inside a mosque in Mecca, the report added.

“Look at those people carrying bodies. They are dead and so will we be one day,” Raihana told them.

Abbas recalled that he was still able to talk to his wife over the phone at about 12:00 p.m. that day and she said everything was just fine.

When he tried calling her again, the line was dead.

Later that day, his wife showed up in Abbas’ dream.

“I saw my wife beside me. ‘You have already arrived,’ I said. I tried to talk to her while putting my hand on her, but she suddenly stood up without a word and went out with her black abaya on,” he told Arab News.

Abbas said he later learned from their daughter that Raihana was killed in the accident. - JLA/VVP, GMA News